An anonymous reader writes: I'm so angry! -that I don't know where to start. I read slashdot a few times per day, 'almost' every day. I've tried to submit a story several times about some new hardware that revolutionizes both home and office. A drastically different piece of hardware than anything else out there. But My story got tossed I don't know how many times. I re-wrote it different ways, each time making sure it was not an "advertisement" for a company, but an awareness article. -all to no avail.

THEN I see stories on the FRONT page of slashdot, such as "what is your favorite way to make coffee?" (just to pull out a recent one) and I about lost it!

For years I have thought that slashdot was for latest breaking news about software, hardware, issues, and for news surrounding computers, IT, security etc.. but I cannot understand why my story of a powerful and unique piece of hardware cannot make the news.. but "how I like my coffee" can..

I give up... I'm beginning to think that concerned readers/posters, who are truly concerned about what slashdot has always been about, have all left the building. And, that I'm beginning to wonder what the people are like who are reading this now. How can a question of 'How I like my coffee' or 'what is my favorite soda' make the front page.. but not something revolutionary in the computer industry... I just cannot understand..

so my question is.. what is most important for you to read about in slashdot?What is missing in slashdot? -I hope to see this question come online, because I really want to know.

GotCode writes: "Ok so we have seen how the big guns are commercializing the open source model and now users have the fix it your self approach or pay for commercial support and/or additional features. With money coming into open source projects is this changing the direction of how open source projects can evolve ?

For those users paying for commercial support of an open source product what really is the benefit of an open source product ? With larger commercial interests in open source are we going to loose control of our creativity just because someone or an organization can stump up the cash to push development into a particular direction, i.e development by cash influence rather than by community direction and values.

In this light is open source just becoming a buzz word to get you noticed ? Is there really any difference between this and giving away a closed software product and just charging for support and or consulting services. From a customer point of view if they get what they want for free but pay for the support and services and can influence the feature set with cash where is the benefit of open source to an end consumer of it ?

Is it time for Free Software, Software leasing or Pay as you go type of software to become more prevalent? Or is there another business model that could be used for this ?"

n2art2 writes: "I'm looking for a solution to the problem of having multiple cell phones. I would like to be able to combine 4 cell phones into one. I can't just get rid of the phone numbers, because they are all important for different business needs. I could forward 3 of the numbers to the 4th phone. . . that that can get expensive, and is not all that effective. I would prefer to have the ability with 1 phone, to have 4 inbound numbers attached to it. Is this something that is possible, or available? What are your suggestions?"

eldavojohn writes: "I was stumbling around on Wikipedia and came across an interesting entry entitled "The Second Space Race" (referring to the race between countries, not private enterprise). I've also have been noticing more and more recent news and articles using the phrase. But also in the news are plans for some countries to band together for parts of or all of their near future plans. Are we truly on the cusp of another space race between countries? If so, why was there such a large gap between the first space race and this one? Has the idea to privatize space exploration already failed? If this is a space race, what are the winning conditions? Colonizing the moon? Manned Mars expedition? Is this a sign that countries today are still as divided as the US and USSR were during the first race or is this just a healthy competition like the Olympics?"

computernut writes: "I recently had a bike stolen in the middle of the night from outside my apartment, and it made me think about the safety/security of my laptop and other electonic gizmos that I own. I take the standard precautions with my laptop, I carry a laptop lock cable where ever I take the laptop, use a non laptop bag to carry it and just ordered one of these security stickers
There are plenty of articles that crop up on the web that talk about laptop security. A google search brought back plenty... here's one, and another and another and another
What methods do other slashdoters use to protect their laptops and other electronic items in the real world ?
Has anyone ever had an occasion when one of these methods has actually saved something of theirs ?"

zakiakhmad writes: "Hi!
I am trying to do research on several authentication methods, such as: Token, PKI(Public Key Infrastructure), Biometrics, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) etc. I need to know the correlation between the authentication method with the maturity level for each authentication method. To be precise, I need to know the state of each authentication method: How do the market response? Any data will be very helpful.
Thank you for your attention.
Zaki Akhmad"

debian12yrold writes: "At our school, we have been assigned laptops that run a copy of Windows XP. I have asked the helpdesk in our school to set my BIOS up so that it boots from a CD, for the purposes of trying and testing various Linux discs. What I would like to be able to do, is get a LiveCD that will tell my computer to boot up of an image on an external hard disk. Although this setup would allow me to boot up off a custom image, it would not allow me to edit or alter the custom image while I used it (LiveCD versus Hard-disk install). The ideal solution for this would be a system where the boot-loader could act like a wrapper around the image, tricking the OS into thinking that the image is a HDD (without the virtualization speed penalties). Does the Slashdot community know of any system that would allow me to do this without any speed penalties?"